The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to transmission of beam switch commands through control channel signaling.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include fourth generation (4G) systems such as a Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) systems, and fifth generation (5G) systems which may be referred to as New Radio (NR) systems. These systems may employ technologies such as code division multiple access (CDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), or discrete Fourier transform-spread-OFDM (DFT-S-OFDM). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations or network access nodes, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
In a mmW system, a base station and a UE may communicate via one or more directional beams. A transmitter (e.g. a base station) may engage in a beam sweeping procedure to establish a set of active beam pairs with a receiver (e.g., a UE). An active beam pair may include an active transmit beam of the transmitter and a corresponding active receive beam of the receiver. The transmit beams and the receive beams in an active beam pair may be refined through, for example, beam refinement procedures. As the transmit beams are directional, when a UE moves relative to the base station, the transmit and receive beams may need to be switched to different beams of a different beam pair corresponding to a different direction. Efficient techniques for performing such beam switching may help to enhance the efficiency of mmW systems.